The Unbender Trilogy
by Empatheia
Summary: Zuko x Katara, the Gaang, Azula. Katara has a secret that has her running from her friends in the middle of the night without a word. Zuko keeps it for her... until he can't.
1. Dreambender

**A/N: **This is now officially a flashfic for **YamiKinoko**, for the Avatar flashfic community on LiveJournal.

It has a bit of a story. The request was for Zuko/Katara, which I leapt on because I've been wanting to try my hand at a decent Zutara for some time now. However, I ran into a snag a short way in—despite practically dripping with sexual tension and potential in my head, none of it translated to paper. I ended up with this instead—a plotty, dark, introspective action/drama with smatterings of romance only near the end.

At first I wasn't going to make it my flashfic because of my failure to make it romantic, but as it underwent a minor turnaround before the end, I changed my mind.

The other part of the story is that I didn't realize at first that it was going to be a series, let alone one that would eat my soul for three days and make me type hours on end to finish it. I posted the second part, _Quietbender_, as a separate fic originally. When _Unbender_, the finale, came out, I changed my mind again and deleted _Quietbender_, reposting as the second chapter here.

For those of you who have read this before and wondered where _Quietbender_ went… well, there you go. Hope you enjoy the complete fic. :)

**xxxxx**

_**Dreambender**_

**xxxxx**

The dream shattered.

Zuko woke up to find himself unable to move, unable to breathe, his heart sluggish and straining in his chest. Panic swamped him. His mind cleared of sleep-fog instantly, but he still couldn't move. Through his resolutely shuttered eyelids, he could tell that it was still dark, and by his estimation he hadn't been asleep longer than a couple of hours.

Something was _wrong_.

Thinking as fast as he could, he tested each limb one by one, pressing back against the strange pressure until he was sure he couldn't break it without harming himself. He calmed his heart rate so that his oxygen would last longer and wondered, angrily, if he was seriously about to die after coming _all this way_.

Then suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the pressure vanished, leaving him to suck in great heaving lungfuls of air. Around him, he could hear the others doing the same. So this had not been a personal attack. He couldn't decide whether that was better or worse than the alternative. At least if it was personal he would have an excuse to get angry, return to that familiar, easy state of being. He knew how to deal with anger.

Fear wasn't quite as simple, and this fear less so than most.

Rubbing his aching chest, he sat up.

Aang and Sokka were still on the outskirts of camp. Aang on watch, Sokka half-awake at his feet, both clutching their own chests. Toph was upright already, doing the equivalent for her of staring wildly around, which consisted of standing absolutely still with her eyes closed, listening to her feet.

Zuko already knew what had happened. He'd been expecting it for two weeks, ever since he'd found out about Katara's secret from Aang (who trusted Zuko more than he should).

As if to prove him right, Katara broke into quiet, agonized sobs across the fire from him.

He didn't bother to stand up. He knew he'd never get there before the others. There was nothing he could do anyways, even if she'd let him come within ten feet of her in this vulnerable state.

Sure enough, a split second later a stampede of three concerned friends and one flying rodent swarmed Katara, throwing questions at her at the rate of roughly ten per second.

"What just happened?"

"Are you okay?"

"Did the Fire Nation catch us?"

"Why are you crying?"

"Where does it hurt?"

She let them continue, stammering out half-complete answers in whatever small time they afforded her, for about half a minute. Zuko counted down in his head: _three, two, one--_ She stood so suddenly they all fell away from her into the dirt and stared up at her in mute shock.

"Leave me alone," she snapped, fed up. "I'm fine. The Fire Nation haven't caught up to us. Go back to sleep, I'll explain in the morning."

_Yeah, right_, Zuko thought, but kept the words to himself. Aang would want to know what he meant, he would be forced to explain, and Katara already had enough things she refused to forgive him for without adding this one to the list.

Murmuring amongst themselves, her exhausted friends obeyed the clear tone of command in her voice and returned to their bedrolls. Aang continued to watch her from his perch on a rock. He should have been watching the night, making sure there were no threats coming from outside the camp, but Zuko couldn't really blame him for his distraction. Tonight, the threat came from _inside_ the camp.

As though she could feel his eyes on her, Katara turned and glared at him.

He shrugged, annoyed. Served him right for caring in the first place. He should have known Katara wouldn't welcome his understanding.

Leaving her alone to wallow in her misery, he turned over and tried to go back to sleep. He'd try to get her alone tomorrow and make her understand. He hoped he'd survive the encounter.

xxxxx

When they woke again in the morning, more naturally this time, Katara was gone.

Everyone but Zuko was surprised.

"Where could she have gone? Do you think she was captured by the Fire Nation?" Aang, who was deathly pale. His hands on his glider pole where white-knuckled and shaking.

"Toph! Can you see her?" Sokka, whose clever head was somewhat clearer than the others but still astonishingly blind to the obvious in this instance.

"I can't feel her," Toph said fretfully, "she's not anywhere!"

Zuko couldn't stand it. "Of course you can't," he sneered derisively, "there's a river around here, isn't there?"

They stared at him blankly for a moment.

Sokka understood first, slapping his forehead. "Of course," he said, "she's walking on it. Toph wouldn't feel her through the water."

"That's not fair," said Toph, angry because the only other option was fear.

"What was she thinking?" asked Aang, close to tears now. "Was it something to do with that weird thing that happened last night?"

Zuko hurt for her. How much had she hidden from them, to leave them this ignorant of her situation? He didn't blame her. He wouldn't have wanted to tell anyone either had it been him. "Yes," he said without thinking, "of course it was." Even as the words left his mouth, he wished to the point of gutache that he could take them back, swallow them and keep them somewhere they would never rise again.

It was too late.

The other three stopped and stared at him suspiciously, even Aang. "How do you know? What aren't you telling us?"

He opened his mouth to spit it at them, the obvious thing they'd been missing, but it stuck in his throat. He was trying so hard to be good, be trustworthy, earn her forgiveness. This would be a giant step back. "If you can't figure it out on your own, it's not my business to tell you." He hesitated. "This is Katara's choice. It's kind of a new thing for me, but... I'm going to trust her to deal with it as she sees best."

"We're her _friends!_" yelled Toph, furious.

He couldn't blame her, but neither could he change his decision without hating himself twice as much for it. Zuko wondered for the second time that day if he was going to die. "I know," he said simply. "And I know I'm pretty bad at understanding the whole friendship thing. But everything in me right now is telling me that I can't tell you this for her. She has to do it herself, or not at all."

He wasn't surprised at all when a minute later he found himself encased in a writhing cocoon of earth, with a shimmering blade of water and one semi-ordinary star-metal sword pressing dangerously on the skin of his throat.

"I don't trust you," said Sokka steadily. "You have no right to hide things from us after begging us to trust you."

"You're right," said Zuko, doing his best not to swallow. "But this isn't my secret. I'm not hiding anything from you that's mine to tell. I swear it."

"He's not lying," Toph said, resigned. "And he's not panicking. He's made up his mind. I don't think we're going to get anything out of him."

Sokka snarled, but sheathed his sword. "While we've been wasting our time on this snake, she's been getting further away from us. Let's find that river and see if we can't track her."

The three of them packed up camp in less than five minutes, threw everything onto Appa's back, and nearly set off without him. They gave him a cold glare when he clambered into the saddle with them, but when he didn't say anything, they resigned themselves to his presence and opted instead to ignore him.

That was fine by him. He still hadn't quite figured out how to talk to them in a way that didn't make them angry, and he didn't want to give them any further reason to throw him out. He had atonement to do, and this was the only place he could do it. If it was unpleasant... well, that was his fault, for giving them so many reasons to hate him in the first place.

They found the river two hours later, miles west of the campsite. There was a small tributary leading up to it that Katara had undoubtedly made good use of.

"...Which way?" asked Aang blankly. The river wound away out of sight northwards and southwards, and the jungle vegetation of the area overhung it on both banks with plenty of room for a small woman trying not to be seen to hide in.

She wasn't going anywhere in particular, either, just... away. Their guess was as good as Zuko's, but logic told him after he thought for a moment that she would try to go somewhere uninhabited.

"South," he said, "further in."

"How do you know?" asked Sokka suspiciously.

Zuko shrugged. "I don't. Just a hunch."

"...Well, we don't have any better ideas," sighed Sokka at last, defeated. "South it is."

"You know," said Zuko, the words bursting out of him before he could stop them. Again he wished to take them, and again it was too late.

"What?" they asked, almost in unison.

He hung his head miserably, certain they would push him off Appa for saying this. "Are you sure it's a good idea to go after her right now? She ran away for her own reasons, all of them good ones. Catching her might not end as well as you think."

They glared at him, their frustration revived tenfold.

"Will you please just tell us what you know?" Toph snarled lethally.

He wasn't afraid. They were miles in the air, he would win a battle with a woman who couldn't see without the earth under her feet easily. Aang didn't scare him either, the boy had a set of morals that would kill him too if he ever did something as cruel as kill Zuko in cold blood. Sokka did frighten him, because he could do nearly anything to protect those he decided were dear to him, but even he wouldn't try anything with Aang sitting right there.

The person he was most frightened of, far beyond any of these three, was the one they were chasing.

So, he shook his head regretfully and met their eyes with a hard look of his own. "No. I refuse."

They gave up again, but the tension in the saddle didn't subside at all. If anything, it grew steadily worse, until Zuko was nearly ready to contemplate jumping out on his own and testing a theory he'd once had about using firebending to create lift.

Hours passed without a word from anyone, until Sokka yelled and pointed over the side.

"Looks like Zuko was right after all," he said grudgingly.

Below them, the river was frozen into a delicate canopy of ice arching over the river. Engraved in the shimmering bridge were the words _stop following me._

"Sorry, Katara," said Aang, not looking sorry at all.

Appa continued his meandering course down the river.

Zuko wasn't sure at all that they were flying nearly fast enough to catch up to Katara. She was a waterbending _master_. Sometimes he thought her companions didn't really understand that. Necessity was the mother of improvisation, and Katara had a really good reason to get away from them as fast as she could. It wouldn't surprise Zuko at all if she'd invented some way to fly using the river water to propel her. After all, she'd already figured out how to walk on it days ago.

He couldn't bring himself to feel unhappy about that. That last thing he wanted to do for the next few days was get anywhere near her, at least until she'd found a way to solve her dilemma.

Unfortunately, this was not a wish the world felt like granting him.

Two days of strained silence later, they caught up... so to speak.

She was waiting for them, standing in the middle of a lake surrounded on three sides by cliffs, her clothes ragged and her features sunken. "I thought I told you not to follow me," she said. Her voice was hoarse and furious.

"Katara, please," Aang said, alighting on the water himself with an airbending trick he'd only just learned before her disappearance and reaching out to her.

She leapt away from him as if scalded, falling into a battle stance. "Don't come near me," she snarled.

They stared at her, bewildered and hurt. "But Katara--"

"_No,_" she hissed, eyes slitting. "You don't understand anything. Stay away."

"We would if you'd explain it to us," Sokka snapped. "I don't know what you're playing at, but I kind of thought after all this time you just might understand that you can _trust us_. I mean, you're the one who's always been preaching at Aang to _talk to you,_ harping on and on that everything can be solved if we're just together. And now you have one little problem and you just split, leaving us to worry half to death about you and not having a clue where you are?"

"Well, you found me well enough," she snapped right back at him, the surface of the lake begin to roil.

"That's not the point! The point is that--"

"Stop it," said Zuko, unable to keep his words behind his teeth. "Leave her alone."

"Shut _up!_" Sokka yelled, temper finally snapping. "You're an outsider, you've been our enemy until just recently, what the hell could you possibly know about my sister?"

"Apparently more than you," Zuko fired back, his own temper fraying thin. "I would have thought it was obvious, both what happened and why she ran away, and I would have thought you trusted her enough to let her have her space and figure it out on her own time. For the love of fire, she's trying to _protect_--"

"Shut up, Zuko," Katara interrupted, glaring at him.

The injustice of it all welled up in him until he couldn't bear it anymore. "You know what?" he yelled furiously. "I've been protecting your secret this whole time, trying to convince them to leave you alone, enduring threats of _torture_ from your sweet, innocent little friends here, doing my best to give you what you wanted, and all you can say is 'Shut up, Zuko.' Well, you know what? Shut up, Katara. Either you tell them, or I will. I'm sick of this."

She stared at him for a moment, then at the others. "You don't know?" she asked faintly. "He didn't tell you?"

"No, he didn't, but _you_ should have!" An incandescently enraged Toph.

Katara had the grace to look faintly ashamed. "I thought for sure he'd spill the beans the first chance he got, hoping to gain your trust," she said with a nasty look back at Zuko.

He glared at her.

"That's not the point! We're your friends! You should have told us yourself, not left Zuko to do your dirty work!" Toph again, if possible even angrier than before.

Katara said nothing, letting the ricocheting yells fall flat onto the water from the cliff walls and die into rippling silence. "I didn't have time," she said at last. "I'm sorry. I panicked and did the only thing I could think of. I didn't mean to scare you, or make you think that I don't trust you. It's nothing like that. I just... didn't have time."

All their anger had died in those few intervening seconds before she spoke. It was with a heavy, tired voice that Sokka spoke up next. "Can you explain it to us now?"

"I think so," she said, and for the first time the party saw the enormous mass of fear she's been hiding behind her anger until this point. She was shaking with terror, nearly weeping with it, and was clearly not at all sure that it was safe.

"All right," said Sokka, landing Appa on the shore and helping Toph down. "Let's hear it."

Katara remained standing on the lake while they stood on the beach, the three of them clustered together while Zuko, who already knew what she was going to say, stood a few steps off and crossed his arms.

"Apparently," she began after a deep breath, "there's something that happens when benders learn and increase their power too quickly. I should have studied waterbending over years, getting used to each new level of power as I went, but because of... special circumstances..."

Aang closed his eyes.

"...I had to learn very quickly. My power increased so fast that my control over it couldn't hope to keep up, and that battle six days ago when I froze the entire river pushed me past my limit. As long as I was awake, my willpower was strong enough to at least keep it inside me. While I was sitting there at dinner, getting ready for bed, I was also bending the underground stream beneath the campsite just to let off the excess energy."

"Katara, it shouldn't work like that," said Aang, interrupting.

She waved a hand, asking for silence. "Who else do you know who's learned faster than their control could expand?"

"Um, me?" Aang offered, horrified.

She smiled wearily. "You'll be fine. You may not remember it all the time, but you have centuries of experience controlling your power. If it ever gets too much, you'll just go into the Avatar state and blow it off under the expert control of Roku and the others. I... don't have that advantage."

Aang was silent, stunned.

Zuko sighed.

"I managed to stay awake all night," she continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "But the next night was harder, and the next night even worse. Finally, three days ago, I couldn't help it. I fell asleep."

Three days ago was when they'd all awoken in the middle of the night unable to breathe.

Katara hung her head and continued miserably. "I had a nightmare that the Fire Nation found us," she said, talking faster and faster as though to expel it all before she lost the courage to continue. "In my dream, I reached out and stopped all their blood. And because of my lack of control in the dreaming state, I..." She stopped, swallowing convulsively and fighting tears.

"You stopped ours instead," supplied Zuko quietly, knowing that none of the others would have the cruelty to say it out loud. They all already hated him anyway.

"Yes," confirmed Katara, looking as if she would like nothing better than to let the lake swallow her and never resurface. "I nearly killed you. If I hadn't woken up at that exact moment, you would all be dead." The tears that had been threatening for the last several minutes finally spilled over. She sank to her knees on the gentle waves and began to heave racking sobs.

Her friends were stunned, seemingly unable to think of a single thing to say until Aang stepped forward.

"I...I think I understand, Katara," he said hesitantly. "Remember when I first tried to learn firebending, I tried to use more power than I had control over and ended up hurting you."

"You ran too," she reminded him. "Not the same way I did, but you ran too. You refused to use firebending or learn about it ever again. You ran from its power. I... couldn't run from mine, so I ran with it instead, away from you. So I couldn't hurt you."

"I told you she knew what she was doing," Zuko muttered resentfully.

Sokka stepped into the water. "Katara. It's okay. We'll figure it out. You don't have to deal with this alone."

"Don't be stupid," she lashed out, the lake heaving. "The second I fall asleep, I could kill you all. This is a big deal, Sokka, it's not just going to go away by saying 'friendship conquers all!' Not that I disagree," she said hastily, seeing his expression, "I just know that this is going to take more than love to fix. I need time, and help... help that you can't give me."

"Why not?" asked Aang plaintively. "Why can't we help you?"

"Because there's a chance she might accidentally kill whoever stays to bring her food and train with her," Zuko said, saving Katara from having to explain it.

She nodded miserably. "I can't risk it. A second's failure and I could obliterate all of you. You can't feel this, but it's... bigger than anything I've ever felt before. It's like I'm a permanent channel for the power of all the water within a hundred mile radius, and if I turn in the wrong direction I could wipe out half a country."

"Oh, it can't be _that_ bad," Sokka joked.

She didn't laugh. "You think so?" she asked solemnly. "I'll show you what you can't see from where you're standing. Back up."

Warily, they did as she instructed, retreating to the tree line.

"Watch," she said, and stepped out of the water, turning quickly to drop to her knees and put one hand back in.

Instantly, with a screaming roar like nothing any of them had ever heard before, the middle of the lake dropped sickeningly with a wrench, creating a vicious maelstrom that stretched from one end of the lake to the other. The water thundered around in raging circuits, twisting itself ever deeper and tighter until there was no lake, only whirlpool.

She looked up the beach at their horrified faces with a look that clearly said _you see?_

They did. Even Zuko hadn't understood the true depth of what was tearing its way through Katara right now. He was unspeakably thankful to her for running when she had.

Katara took her hand out. The lake calmed instantly, but all her hair rose around her head and she nearly glowed with power until she stepped back onto the surface with a sigh of relief. Though the surface remained calm, Zuko suspected that beneath it, the entirety of the lake was revolving again with the same horrifying speed and power.

He understood her dilemma even better now.

She couldn't risk Aang, even though he was the only one who stood a chance of withstanding this impossible storm for any length of time. He was the Avatar. He was needed elsewhere. Toph was powerful in her own right, but not like this. Sokka couldn't bend at all. None of her friends could survive being near her.

"It's getting worse," she told them flatly when they could hear again. "It's like I'm being stretched open around it, wider and wider, and pretty soon I'll just snap like an elastic band and it'll flood back into the earth where it belongs."

"We're not going to let that happen!" Aang yelled instantly, instinctively.

"How do you think you're going to stop it?" she asked him sadly.

His mouth gaped soundlessly, but he had no answer. Nobody did. None of them had anything that could possibly help her.

Like a light on the horizon, Zuko suddenly saw his chance dawning. He wouldn't have much time, but maybe this way he could in some way be instrumental to the Avatar's effort. Maybe he could be remembered as something other than a willfully blind, stubborn enemy they'd so hated. Maybe they'd forgive him if he did this. Just maybe... but a chance was all he needed.

"I'll stay," he said.

"What?" the other three yelled, shocked.

Katara didn't say a word. He could see the struggle in her eyes. She didn't want to hurt anyone, but she needed help, and if she had to hurt someone out of all of them, he was the natural choice. He'd earned it dozens of times over.

"Are you suicidal?" snapped Sokka. "No way. You'll die in like, three seconds."

"No, I won't," he said. "Katara's going to figure this out, and she's going to come back to you. I don't plan to die here." That wasn't quite true, but not quite a lie either.

"We're not leaving here without Katara!" interrupted Aang, panicked.

Zuko leveled a hot glare at him. "Jeez! Do none of you trust her whatsoever?"

"Zuko, they might be right, I might not be able to--" Katara started, but he rounded on her with the same ferocious stare.

"Don't you trust _yourself?_ After all of this?"

She met his eyes, pleading with him mutely to understand, please understand...

"I do understand," he said roughly, ignoring her startled look. "You don't think you're strong enough to win this one, and you don't want to hurt them ever again. So... don't. I'll stay, I'll help you figure it out. I don't want to die, but better me than them."

"That's--" she started again, stricken, but stopped herself.

"You were going to say 'not true,' right? But it is true. You need Sokka's brain, Aang and Toph's power, to win this war. I could be useful too, but you don't trust me so my power isn't worth as much. Besides that, they're your friends. There's no way you'd be able to concentrate if you were terrified every second of losing control and killing them. I'm the only logical choice, and I'm saying I'll stay. If I were you, I'd shut up and take the offer. You won't get a better one."

"Since when have you known how to think logically?" Sokka jabbed weakly.

"It's a recent development," Zuko replied shortly with a hint of a mirthless smile. "So? What do you say?"

"Fine," whispered Katara.

The other three jumped in shock. "_Fine?_" they echoed disbelievingly.

Taking a deep breath, she spoke more strongly. "Zuko's right," she said.

"Of all the things I never though I'd hear you say," Sokka muttered.

A wave of relief washed through Zuko. He knew what to do next. After that point it was all pretty unsteady and by-the-moment, but right in this moment, he had a path to follow that he was sure, for the first time in a long time, was the right one.

"All right, good. All of you-- get out."

The uproar was predictable, but he ignored it, shouting over them. "You don't know how her control is right now. She probably doesn't even know herself. It would be pretty stupid if after finally deciding this, you went and stuck around saying your teary see-you-laters too long and ended up dead. Get out. _Now._"

They shot a look at Katara, but she only nodded in agreement. "He's right. Get as far away from here as you can. I'll find you later, so... don't worry."

Wearing identical tormented expressions, the three climbed aboard Appa and launched for the sky and safety.

Zuko and Katara were alone.

"I don't get it," she said. "Why are you here? Why didn't you tell them? Why--"

"One question at a time," he said wryly, putting his pack down and sitting down on a nearby log. "First, I'm here because I decided that I wanted to do whatever I could to help the Avatar. This is in line with that. Secondly, I didn't tell them because you wouldn't have wanted me to. It was your secret to tell them if you chose to, and since you didn't, I figured I should keep my mouth shut."

"I..." She paused, looked away, looked back. The look in her eyes as she met his now was different. There was no anger, and what hatred and mistrust still lingered was harder to see. "Thank you."

"Whatever. You were about to ask another question, right?"

"Yes," she said. "Why have you changed so much?"

That was a... question. A question with a long, painful answer that he wasn't really quite ready to tell her in its entirety, not yet. He hadn't even really faced it himself.

He shrugged uncomfortably and told her the half of it he had already made his peace with. "I guess... for the first time, I really saw what I was doing and how screwed up my way of thinking was. I still don't really know what to think, or even really who I am, but for the first time I know that I'm doing the right thing. I wouldn't trade this for all the approval my father could ever give me."

"I'm... impressed," she said, as though each word was being grudgingly torn from her throat. "I really didn't think you had it in you."

"Neither did I," Zuko said indifferently, despite the quick leap of joy in his chest. This was the first indication that there might be hope, that she might someday view him as something other than a loathed enemy. He wasn't sure why, but it meant something to him that she had thought positively of him again, even if only for a moment. He remembered how it had felt back in that prison with her hand on his cheek, understanding him well enough to be willing to heal him in that moment.

He'd come all this way hoping to feel that way again, and figure out why it was so important to him.

Right in this moment, he thought maybe he had an inkling of why. He respected the Avatar, and he respected Katara, and each of their companions. Not like he'd automatically, thoughtlessly respected his father simply because he was his father and a powerful Firelord. He respected them because they _deserved_ it, and Katara probably more than any of them for her ferocious devotion to doing what she knew was right.

More than anything, he wanted to be respected back by these people, whom he admired. It would make him feel as if maybe there was something in him really worth respecting too.

"So, got any bright ideas?" she asked at last with a weak semblance of her usual feisty grin. "I have to confess I'm all out."

"Not a clue," he admitted, "but you're probably hungry, right? I'll get some food ready. We can think some more after your stomach is full."

"How'd you know? I'm ravenous," she said, nearly drooling.

He shrugged and smiled. "You've been running nonstop for days, and you forgot your pack," he reminded her. "I've got enough for both of us for a few days in my pack, and if it runs out before we figure it out, I'll hunt and search for edible plants. Uncle Iroh taught me a lot about how to find food in the wild."

Katara wiped her eyes, looking surprised that they were leaking again. "I'm not sure what to say," she said, sounding closer to happy than he'd heard her for a long time.

"You don't have to waste time thinking of stuff to say to me," he said sternly, "use it better and find a way out of this predicament."

"You're right."

"That's the third time today," he teased. "Be careful or you might end up agreeing with me on a regular basis."

She laughed, a welcome sound. "Not likely."

He laughed with her, then set about cooking her dinner before she collapsed of starvation. He made it good. It could be the last food either of them ate if this went badly.

"You're not a bad cook," she granted him about halfway through, after she'd managed to slow down past the cramming stage. "I never would have guessed."

"Yeah, well, I traveled with Uncle Iroh for years," Zuko said, fighting an embarrassing blush. "I could hardly _not_ learn."

"I'll remember to thank him next time I see him," she mumbled around another mouthful of vegetarian stir-fry.

Zuko smiled and ate his own dinner, reveling in the new feeling that came with being of use to her. He'd never really tried to help anyone else before. It felt better than he'd expected.

"All right," she said when she'd finally eaten enough to bloat her.

He waded into the shallows to retrieve the plate for her, resigning himself to getting wet a lot in the next while.

"I'll probably be sick in a bit, but for now let's do something so I don't fall asleep."

"Something like...?"

She threw her hands up. "I don't know! I've been thinking about this for days and haven't had a single good idea. I've tried meditating, I've tried blasting it all out at once, but all the first one did is make me nearly fall asleep and the second one made it worse."

"You described it like a hole in yourself, right? A sort of channel?"

She nodded.

Zuko thought. "And it was widening, stretching you around it?"

Another nod. She wasn't sure where he was going with this, but that was fair since he didn't either.

"So if you can't close yourself around the power and bring it back to manageable flow levels..."

"It's like trying to crush a tree trunk in my arms," she said. "It's so much stronger than me, there's no way that'll work."

A glimmer of an idea came to him. "It's water, right? Have you tried letting go into it and swimming out?"

"It... doesn't work quite like that," she said, but there was a thoughtfulness in her voice that hadn't been there a minute ago. "I would be destroyed."

"Is there any way to... snap, as you said, but reform yourself outside of the power?"

She was silent for a moment, apparently pondering this. "I might be able to," she admitted reluctantly, "but I think if I did, I wouldn't be a waterbender anymore."

"It's that or die," he pointed out.

She curled in on herself miserably. "I know," she said, "but if I lose that power, I'll be useless."

A flare of hot anger came to life inside him. "Don't be stupid," he said harshly, making her snap her head up and look at him in surprise. "Your brother, Sokka-- he can barely bend grass by standing on it, and yet I've never heard you call _him_ useless."

She fidgeted. "That's different, he has his brain. He's a great battle strategist. I'm just--"

He cut her off impatiently. "I've only been with you for a month and I can see plain as day that you're anything but useless. If it weren't for you caring for all of them, for your the strength of your conviction and your belief in all of them, they would never have made it this far. Aang is the leader, but they all look up to you. Even I'm not dumb enough to miss that."

Katara was at a loss for words. "I... I... but..."

"But nothing. They need you, waterbender or not. If this keeps up you're going to die, and do you really think you'll be more useful to them dead than powerless?"

Her eyes filled with tears. "I know you're right, I just--"

"Just what?" he cut across ruthlessly. "Are you so addicted to your power that you'd rather die than risk losing it?"

Dimly, he wondered where that had come from. He'd certainly never meant to say something like that, was pretty sure he was far too stupid when it came to understanding people to ever have said it from his own wisdom. Perhaps the spirits had intervened.

No matter, because he was about to die anyway.

Katara's eyes were huge and unblinking with shock. "What did you just--"

"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure whatever I said, it was right," he said resignedly.

"Me? Addicted to power? What gives you the _right--_"

The lake groaned and Zuko felt the earth shake under him. Every second he lived now was longer than he'd expected to. He hoped the insight helped her, since it was about to cost his life.

Seconds passed, and then more, until nearly a minute had gone by without a cataclysm. He opened his eyes and found, to his shock, not a furious Katara, but a broken one. She was curled up on the waves weeping and pulling at her hair until it nearly came out from the roots.

Alarmed, Zuko stood and ran into the lake, instantly feeling the horrific current yanking at him as he passed knee-depth. He'd been right-- the maelstrom was still there.

Determinedly, he waded further out, anchoring his feet as best he could in the silty lakebed. "Katara!" he called. "Katara, calm down!"

"You're right," she sobbed, "you're right and I hate you for it. I hate myself for it. I can't imagine a life without waterbending. I don't want to think of myself being that weak."

"You're not weak!" he yelled over the din. "After everything that's happened, all that horrible things you've been through, you're still fighting! If you lose your power, you'll still keep fighting! _Katara!_"

She wailed, rising like a wraith above the water which was eerily dissolving into mist. "Get back, Zuko," she warned. "I'm losing control again. Come back in the morning."

He slammed his fist into the water uselessly, feeling familiar frustration boil through him. It was just like back then, trying to catch the Avatar and being thwarted at every turn. He couldn't do anything, couldn't help anyone, he just made people angry and screwed things up.

The lake swirled around his calves as he thrashed his way out and picked up his pack from the beach. "I'll be back," he promised, swallowing his frustration. "I'm not giving up. Not this time."

Zuko turned and fled into the hills, and felt the lake explode behind him.

xxxxx

The entire night he lay awake and stared at the sky, fuming over his inability to do anything right, ever.

He was exhausted by the time the sun rose, but as he'd promised, he picked his pack up and marched back down the mountain to the beach.

Katara lay in the middle of the lake again, lazy spiral patterns swirling out from her still body, fast asleep.

Zuko sighed and dropped onto the beach to wait for her to wake up. Startling her awake would be more dangerous than it would be wise to risk.

With nothing better to do, he put together a cold breakfast of bread, cheese, jerky, and a few fresh wild greens he'd found the night before. She'd be hungry when she woke up.

The sun was well over the horizon when he finally heard the water stir. He turned to look just as she leapt to her feet with a cry of dismay, looking around her as though expecting the beach to be strewn with bodies. On seeing Zuko alive, alone, and with breakfast laid out, she sagged with relief and sank back into the water.

"Another nightmare?" he asked, glad that this one hadn't involved her annihilating a squadron of nonexistent soldiers and wishing he'd waited a while longer before daring to come down.

"Yeah," she said, "a predictable one."

Without waiting for her to ask, he brought her breakfast out to her and sat down to eat his own. "Have any good ideas in your sleep?"

"None better than yours," she said regretfully. "I had another dream earlier that I traveled up a river to the capital and obliterated it, but if I did that I would kill a lot of innocent people and probably die myself."

The idea hit him like lightning. Why hadn't he thought of it first, why hadn't _Sokka_ thought of it first, it was so obvious-- "Not if I went ahead and warned them to get out," he said, excitement beginning to rise within him. "They know me, and they know the Avatar. If we went together and warned them to evacuate--"

"Wouldn't the Firelord just leave, then, too?" she said doubtfully, taken aback that he was even considering what she seemed to think was just a crazy dream.

Zuko shook his head. "No! I know him, better than anyone except maybe Uncle Iroh. His pride won't let him leave the city like a refugee. And also, because of that pride, he won't be able believe that you're more powerful than him, not a little Water Tribe girl."

She considered him, still off-balance but beginning to wonder with him now. "You really think it would work?"

"Yes!" he said, nearly bursting with excitement now. "And even if by some miracle he decided to leave after all, you would have control of the capital. That's the center of the entire war effort-- if you take it away, they'll scatter and be forced to find a new base. While they do that, you can separate them, disarm them, and win. Katara, it would work. I guarantee it."

"I..." She sucked in a deep breath, then stood up to face him, somehow managing to look wildly noble in her tatters and rags. "If you can get the innocent out, I guess I'll... I'll give it a try."

"I won't let you down," he promised, then scooped up his pack and set off at a dead run. "I'll go find the others, and come back for you when it's done. I promise!"

"Zuko!" she called after him. "Zuko, thank you!"

He waved over his shoulder, wordless but clear: _glad to help_.

xxxxx

The others weren't nearly as difficult to convince as he'd been sure they would be.

"Katara believes that it will work," he said, pulling his trump card on them and seeing their doubtful faces cave in. "It was my idea, but she's behind it. Please trust her if you won't trust me."

"Okay," said Aang, blessed Aang, wonderful open-hearted Aang. "If Katara and you agree on this, I kind of have to, because there's no way Katara would agree with you on anything if she wasn't absolutely sure you were right."

That was less a vote of confidence than ideal, but Zuko would take it gladly. "Then you'll come with me to the capital?"

"Yeah, I guess so," said Sokka, shrugging helplessly. "For the record, this is _insane_, but Aang's right. If Katara agrees, I'll trust her on it."

Toph rolled her shoulders. "You're all nuts," she said, but then she grinned, feral and dangerous. "I like it."

Zuko breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. He was getting better at being good.

xxxxx

His good mood had long since dissipated.

Now, there was only necessity and action. He'd warned the people, made a speech from the center of town side by side with the Avatar, pled with them with all the passion in his heart.

Most of them had left. Some of them hadn't. They were the ones who stubbornly clung to their belief in the Firelord and his militant, bloodthirsty vision for the world. They were the ones who supported the war and backed it in whatever way they could, though they could not wield weapons for whatever reason.

They were not innocent.

It was time to get Katara.

They plotted out a course from her lake to the capital that never took her further than a mile from water, commandeered a small rivership so she wouldn't have to get any further above it than necessary, and hoped it would be enough.

She wept when she saw them. "I don't know if I can do this," she sobbed. "All those people--"

"Katara," said Zuko gently. "I gave them a choice. I told them exactly what was coming. They chose to stay. Whatever happens, no one will be able to blame you for it."

"Still," she said, and suddenly he understood that she wasn't balking, wasn't refusing. She was just trying to make her peace with necessity.

"You can ask forgiveness later," he said. "Right now, there are just as many lives being lost to the Fire Nation as you're going to take, and so many more back across the years."

"Are you saying this is justified?" she gasped, unable to stem the tears.

"No," he said, letting the grief for his people show in his eyes so she would understand. "I'm saying it's forgivable."

He held her gaze for long moments, willing the others to be silent. Finally, at last, she nodded. Just once, slowly, but he recognized it for the acceptance it was.

Zuko held out his hand to her. "Come with me, Katara," he said. "We're going to end this war."

She stepped off the water and took his hand with a grip firm enough to make his bones ache. "Get me there as fast as you can," she said, her voice already strained.

They took her to the ship, and she let the power stream from her behind them so that the ship fairly flew up the river.

Zuko stood at the back of the ship with her the entire two-day journey back to the city. At first he only stood close by, ready at her request to take her and leap off the ship in case she lost control.

As the hours wore past, she withered, leaning on the railing for support.

Finally, she drifted sideways and fell. Zuko caught her, held her upright, supported her as she dissolved.

By the time they reached the city she was a wraith. Zuko carried her that last mile to the city gates, and then through the city itself up to the palace.

"Put me down," she whispered.

Zuko obeyed, setting her down in the middle of the great paved courtyard before the palace.

The doors above them swung ponderously open to reveal the Firelord. Zuko had been half-expecting to see him, but not so soon, so quickly, not _yet_. He sneered down at them, back straight and pride intact. "So this is what you bring to destroy my city? A half-dead peasant girl? I'll admit I expected something a bit more... impressive."

"Run," Katara whispered. "Get out. I can take it from here."

Aang shook his head. "What about the Firelord? There's no way--"

"Aang," she said. "Sokka. Toph. I love you. Please get out."

Zuko insinuated himself between her slumped, thin body on the stone and her friends, who were doing their best to screw everything up because they loved her too much. "Trust her," he said. "I'll protect her if she needs it. She wants you alive. Go."

"You too, Zuko," she said, surprising all of them but Zuko most of all. "Run away. Please."

"I've been here this long," he said resolutely, shaking off the shock. "This is as much my fight as it is yours. That's my father up there. This is his scar on my face. Are you really going to tell me to turn my back on this?"

"You'll die," she croaked.

"Maybe," Zuko said, forging through the surge of fear that realization brought on. "Maybe not. Either way, I'm staying, and you can't make me leave."

"All right," she said with a ghost of a smile. "Your funeral."

Zuko turned and faced the others, resolve strong in him. "It'll be all right," he said. "I'll keep her alive. Safe. Even if it kills me. I swear it on my honour as Zuko, son of Ursa."

"If you screw this up, I will hunt you forever," Sokka promised.

Zuko met his eyes, then saluted. "Get them out of here."

Sokka nodded, then spun and caught Aang under one arm and Toph under the other. He was taller than them, stronger than them, but he still would have lost if they had fought him. They didn't-- their last and greatest show of trust in Katara... and in him.

Moments later they were gone, a small white spot in the endless sky.

"You plan to fight me without the Avatar?" Ozai scoffed, laughing heartily. "You're mad."

"Maybe so," said Zuko fiercely, feeling more pulsingly, blazingly alive in this moment than he ever had before. "But that's beside the point. The war is going to end today. You are going to die."

"Well go ahead and try if you like!" crowed Ozai, raising his hands and calling wreaths of flame into existence. "I will take great pleasure in erasing scum like you from the memory of our noble family! Traitor!"

He barrelled down the steps. Zuko drew his twin swords, feeling the insane urge to laugh. He felt wonderful.

"Zuko!" Katara cried out, reaching up and catching his wrist. "Hold on to me, and don't let go!"

He didn't stop to think, simply obeyed, dropped to his knees and gathered her into his chest. She hardly existed anymore, a mist of fragile flesh over delicate bones, a shadow of the robust and powerful girl he'd known. It would be a miracle if she survived this.

It would be twice a miracle if _he_ survived, but somehow he wasn't afraid. Sitting here at the end of the world with the most courageous girl he'd ever known in his arms, knowing that she didn't hate him anymore, remembering that she'd _thanked_ him for this, he couldn't bring himself to feel regret.

He felt his death coming for him, and couldn't do anything but smile helplessly at it and hold Katara harder, trusting her with everything.

"You should have run," she whispered into his ear.

The world exploded.

**XxxxxX**

**A/N: **I hope you enjoyed it! Comments are welcome if you feel so inclined.

**Edit:** There have been some questions and concerns posed to me via review and email that I would like to address, for your benefit. They are all valid points.

**Katara has become as bad as what she's fighting by doing this.**

I disagree. She had a hard choice between two evils, one of which would protect her friends and one of which would not. They're at war, and the capital is a battlefield—a warning was more than they were obligated to give. I address issue again later, so keep reading.

**The canon is all about not running away from your fears or your destiny, it's out of character for Aang and the others to have run.**

Again, I respectfully disagree. Not that canon is strong about not running away. That I absolutely agree on. I disagree, rather, that Aang and the others ran away at all. I believe it was a much harder choice for them to make to trust Katara and give her space than it would have been to stay, therefore, they didn't take the easy way out at all. They took the harder path and grew up a little because of it.

**If Katara is experiencing this power overload, how come Toph isn't? She's young for a bending master too.**

That wasn't a mistake, I made it this way for two reasons. 1.) Toph has been bending since she was very small to compensate for her lack of eyesight, while Katara is only just learning to bend when we meet her in canon. A very short period of time later, she's a waterbending master. Her growth rate was far, far faster than Toph's, who took years to reach her current level. 2.) Toph, unlike Katara, had a bending tutor. He was admittedly incompetent, but he did say in the first episode we meet her that he'd been keeping her to the basics right from the beginning. This means, essentially, that she'd had weekly training sessions in using her power and controlling it, thus building up her tolerance slowly and gradually. Katara simply exploded into her power without any help until she reached the Northern Water Tribe, at which point she was already at a dangerous level of power.

Xxx

That should cover it. Feel free to ask me any other questions you might have. I'll do my best to answer them.

Thanks again for reading.

-Eia


	2. Quietbender

**A/N: **Part two of the soul-eating monster. Much shorter and more introspective than the other two, an interlude between main movements if you will. :)

Also, just a note, any reviews containing any variation on 'needs more citrus! make them kiss! I want them to fall in love and get married and have sixteen adorable children! moar smut please!' will be lit on fire and thrown at your window in the middle of the night, and it will serve you right if your house burns down. This is _not _(primarily) a romance fic.

Enjoy!

**xxxxx**

_**Quietbender**_

**xxxxx**

The water followed her finger the way it would follow anyone else's.

Katara stared numbly into the cup, watching how over and over again the water did exactly what it was supposed to. There were tear-tracks, old and dried, crusting her cheeks, and her eyes were hollowed into her pale skull. It was clear that she hadn't slept or eaten in a very long time by the fragile texture of her bruise-yellow skin.

Every once in a while one of them would say something to try and cheer her up, pull her out of this silent dark hole she'd created for herself, but she would only smile wanly at them in a sad semblance of her old self and tell them she was fine, fine, perfectly all right. If they yelled, which they sometimes did, she looked at them as though she couldn't understand why they were angry and told them angrily to leave her alone, she was _fine_, dammit.

The only one who never said a word was Zuko, because he understood.

He knew the place she was drifting through right now. He remembered it from the long dark nights after Ursa had vanished, staring at the ceiling and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one wanted him, no one needed him, there was no place for one such as him in the world. And because he remembered, he knew that nothing anyone could say would ever convince her otherwise. The understanding had to come from within or not at all.

So he sat opposite her at the table and said nothing, allowing her the time to find her own way through. Most of the time he studied the scrolls and books they'd found in the Firelord's personal library, taking breaks only when his body demanded food or relief. Whenever he needed to sleep, he laid his head on the table and slept like a warrior or a scholar, unheeding of his surroundings but ready to wake at a moment's warning.

The others asked him, each in turn, why he insisted on sitting _there_, when there were plenty of other places to sit that may have been more comfortable and did not have Katara sitting across from it emanating bleak sorrow. That last they did not voice, but he heard it anyway, and answered it with his eyes while he answered the first with his voice. "I like this seat," he told them. It wasn't precisely a lie.

It had taken the Water Tribe seventeen days to completely wash the city clean of blood. On warm, clear days, they could still smell it. It had seeped into the bones of the city and would never be fully cleansed away. Perhaps that was for the best-- it would be harder to forget this way.

They had been warned. Zuko had reminded her of that, right afterwards, as she lay broken and desolate in his arms, staring up at a red-misted sky. He had warned them. Aang had warned them. Every one of them had stood there on that rooftop over the city and told the people of the Fire Nation capital that there was a bloodbender coming, one who was so vastly powerful even she could not hope to control herself. They had told the people that they would not survive if they had stayed. They had stayed anyway, and therefore this fate was one they had chosen for themselves.

Katara, being the person she was, refused to forgive herself nevertheless.

Zuko was not surprised. He hadn't expected her to. That was why he sat here, day in and day out, each crimson sunrise after the next, protecting her silence as best he could.

She had already been courageous enough for three lifetimes. She had only been quiet for twelve days. He thought it massively unfair that they were already asking her to be courageous again so soon... but then, he'd been there, at her side when the world ended. They hadn't, they couldn't possibly understand, it was unfair of him to expect them to, but it made him angry to watch them push and pull her like she was _obligated_ to be what they expected her to be. He knew what that felt like and had hated it as much as he was sure she hated this.

It was true, however, that they needed her. Without her belligerent maternal presence they were falling apart at the seams. Aang was losing his eternal battle with self-doubt, Sokka was understandably half-frantic with terror that she would never return to herself, and Toph simply refused to speak to anyone unless it involved a screaming insult match. They barely spoke to each other except in terse sentences discussing what to do next.

Zuko realized suddenly that without her, these people would never have been traveling together at all. Sokka loved Aang now, yes, but he never would have without Katara holding them together until they stuck. Toph, despite the way she and Katara ceaselessly managed to push her buttons, would never have grown into the person she was now, who was capable of making friends and keeping them. Aang would have run, and run again, and again. It was only because of Katara's unwavering belief in him that he had been able thus far to stand strong and walk forward towards his frightening destiny. Without that, he was lost, pathless and weak.

He hadn't understood before just how much each of these people needed each other, how useless they were if even one member of their little army fell. Their interdependency both frightened him and made him envious-- he had never had anyone rely on him like they relied on her, never had anyone trust him to that extent. No one had ever loved him like they loved her, from the position of an equal who knew no more about her than she knew about them. Iroh had loved him, and he had loved Iroh, but he had never deluded himself that he knew anything about his uncle beyond what Iroh chose to let him see.

Yes, he envied them, even as the thought of being that vulnerable to anyone else terrified him.

Therefore, towards the end of being someone worth Katara's trust, he sat and practiced bending the silence, and waited for her. He was prepared to wait forever.

As it turned out, she only made him wait five more days, being a surpassingly kind person. "Zuko," she said at three in the morning on the twenty-third day.

He had not been sleeping, not really. He hadn't really slept for weeks. "Katara?"

"What should I have done?"

He smiled at her, glad that everyone else was asleep and wouldn't question him for doing so. Reaching out across the table, he caught her hand. It was cold and bird-thin, but undeniably still belonged to a living person. "Exactly what you did," he said.

"It was the right thing to do?" she asked, the hope in her eyes painfully bleak and bright like dawn in winter.

He shrugged. "You tell me."

"Zuko!" she cried, an echo of her old power in her sudden anger. "Answer the question!"

"I can't," he said honestly. "I don't know if it was or not. All I know is that of all the options you had back then, you chose the one that would end the war and help your friends. I have no business forgiving you first."

"First?" she echoed, confused.

"Before you do," he amended, tightening his hold on her hand.

She was quiet for a long minute. Zuko could feel it curling around both of them, introspective but lighter than it had been these past weeks.

Finally, she nodded, firmly, as though confirming something to herself. "I was wrong," she said, shocking him utterly.

He'd been so sure, so sure--

"But," she continued, cutting off his train of thought, "I won't regret it anymore. It's done, and it can't be undone, so the best I can do is help Aang and hope someday I can atone for it."

Zuko swallowed hard, stunned by how much she sounded like himself from a couple months ago, determined to right his mistakes by helping the Avatar until forgiveness could be had. If she, the person he'd admired the strength of so much, was capable of feeling that same weakness...

"I--" he stuttered, trying to say something, anything that would show her that he understood--

"Zuko," she said, cutting him off again. She was smiling, her eyes clear again.

He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. "Yes?" he croaked, overwhelmed.

"Thank you," she said, and brought her other hand up to cover his where it rested wrapped around hers. "For waiting."

It seemed to him the most natural thing in the world then to stand up, circle the table until he was standing in front of her, and drag her into his arms. "Thank you for coming back," he said into her hair, voice muffled and rough. "Welcome home."

**XxxxxxX**

**A/N: **Questions and comments welcome. Thanks for reading so far. Now, on to the main event:D


	3. Unbender

**A/N: **And at last, it ends. Thank the gods. I'm so tired.

**xxxxx**

_**Unbender**_

**xxxxx**

Azula was still smiling.

They had expected this, Zuko had made sure to warn them, but he could tell it still unsettled them that she could smile in this situation. It was a favourite trick of hers-- it made her look as though she had a trick up her sleeve that she was just waiting for the right dramatic moment to pull out, like she actually had the upper hand but they just didn't know it yet. It made him uneasy, too, but that was because he knew the odds were good she actually _did_ have something held in reserve.

His hands, hidden behind his back, hadn't left the hilts of his twin swords since they'd arrived at the main campout of the scattered Fire Nation army to find Azula sitting at their center like a vicious, clever spider.

The capital was destroyed, but thanks to the Avatar's and Zuko's warning, most of the army had evacuated and remained intact, spread throughout the surrounding countryside. They had been leaderless. Zuko had half-hoped Azula had died along with the rest of the city who refused to run, but her survival instinct was far too strong for him to have held any real belief in her death. And now he was proven right-- she had run, and she had begun to reform the army under herself. With Ozai dead and Zuko banished, she was Fire Lady now, in actuality if not in word just yet.

Therefore, the next logical step after securing the capital in the wake of Katara's swift, destructive victory was to take care of the army before it could fully reorganize and pose a threat again.

To that end, the Avatar and his group of closest confidants had come to parlay with Azula, on neutral ground far from either of their armies. Azula had three firebenders with her whom Zuko recognized as the best in their years. Aang had Katara, Toph, Sokka, and him. Only Toph and Zuko were benders, Sokka only had his sword, and Katara had nothing at all, so the situation was actually close to even despite Aang's extra person.

"Surrender," said Aang. He did not raise his voice. There were bags of exhaustion under his eyes, making him look far older than his bare dozen years, but there was an authority in his voice that was unmistakeable.

Azula sneered and crossed her arms. "You must be joking. I have three thousand firebenders here who will be ready to move in less than a week. You ought to be running for your lives, kids."

"You're scattered," Sokka reminded her, "and now we have both the earth and waterbenders together behind the walls of your own fortress... united, rested, and strong."

"I'm shaking," Azula said with a laugh that said she was clearly not frightened in the least. "I think you underestimate the temper of the people of the Fire Nation. They are furious over those who died at the capital. There were some who might have followed you before, but not now."

"They were warned," said Sokka coldly. "We're at war. We weren't obligated to give them even that much, but we did because none of us would have been able to live with ourselves otherwise."

Azula snorted derisively. "So, you're still clinging to that ridiculous idea that you're somehow better than us? You killed hundreds of our people in cold blood. You're right on our level now."

Beside him, Zuko felt Katara move, and reached out too late to stop her. She pushed her way past Aang and Sokka to face Azula head on, her hands hanging clenched at her sides.

"You're wrong," she said defiantly.

"Oh?" said Azula, arching one bold eyebrow in amusement. "Am I now?"

"At the very least, you're not completely right," Katara amended, the light in her eyes flickering for a moment before coming back stronger than before. "I may be as bad as you-- maybe worse. I know what I did was horrific, an atrocity, and I don't ask forgiveness for it. However, you're wrong in saying Aang and the others are the same. They tried to stop me. They didn't like this idea at all, and the only reason they agreed to it was because I was dying anyway, I had the power to create the victory we needed, and they were desperate to end the war before any more people died. They still wish every day they'd had time to think of a better way. Even after everything you've done to them, to our people, they still grieve for all the people that died for that victory. Don't you dare say they're on your level. They're better people than you could ever hope to be."

"Ooh, so passionate," mocked Azula.

Zuko furrowed his brow. He knew his sister, and unless he was very much mistaken, she was rattled by something Katara had said. Perhaps she had not expected them to come to terms with the darker side of war-- she believed them to be merely starry-eyed children, convinced that the power of love could solve all the world's problems. Perhaps they had been, even just a few months ago, but they were not children anymore. Not since before Katara had learned bloodbending, possibly even earlier than that.

"No, Katara," murmured Aang, putting a hand on her elbow. "She's right. We could have stopped you if we'd really tried to, maybe we could have even found another way. We share the blame for this. Stop trying to take it all on yourself like some kind of martyr." He turned back to Azula, face hard. "I'm not asking you to follow me," he said. "I'm demanding your surrender. What's your answer?"

She sighed and rolled her shoulders as though bored. "Not a chance, brat. Zuzu can tell you-- I'm a natural strategist, and I have the advantage of numbers. I'm not going to surrender. I'm going to _win._ "

Zuko grinned at her. "Yeah, she's telling the truth," he said, "she was always better at strategy lessons than I was... she was better at everything, actually, but that doesn't matter anymore. Azula, I know something you don't know. You should surrender."

Azula stared at him. He had never spoken up to her like this before, without fear in his voice, with this easy confidence that came from knowing the strength of his companions and trusting in their victory.

"...You've grown up, Zuzu," she said at last, an odd note in her voice. "But I don't care what it is you know. What I know is that I have enough firebenders that'll follow me to flatten the capital, and all of you in it."

Zuko did not reply, only met her ferocious glare calmly and continued to smile at her. Their positions were reversed-- always before, it had been Zuko glaring defiantly at her, and she smirking superiorly at him. It felt good to be in her shoes for once, but he didn't plan to make a habit of being a bastard.

"This is pointless," muttered Sokka. "I should have known this crazy witch wouldn't be nice enough to surrender. Looks like we'll have to do it the hard way, Aang."

The Avatar nodded wearily. "Consider yourself warned, Azula, you and all your men. If you fight, you will die. I don't want anyone else to die, but precisely because of that, I can't let you win. Even if we have to kill every one of the Firebenders behind you, I'll hate it, but I'll do it if it'll end the war."

"Don't think that we'll be weak or hesitate just because we're nice people," Toph continued fiercely.

"Our people have suffered a hundred years of oppression and senseless death under the Fire Nation," Katara picked up quietly. "They haven't forgotten."

"I owe them for Mom's life," said Sokka, "and everyone else who died in that raid."

"They have better reasons to fight for than you do, Azula," Zuko finished, "so you're going to lose."

Her smile had vanished. "Little rat," she hissed. "Ran off the sinking ship to the winning side, did you? Or at least you think so, right? Well, you just wait. I'll make you wish you died with Mother."

Zuko snarled and lunged for her, but Katara blocked his path, catching him in her weak arms and pushing him back with all her strength. "No, Zuko," she muttered ferociously in his ear, "don't give her the pleasure of knowing she got to you. Come on. We're leaving." She grasped his hand firmly to prevent him from leaping for his sister's throat again.

"We'll come back in a week and ask again," Aang said formally. "Please reconsider in that time." He turned and walked away, the rest of his group following him.

Azula burst into wild laughter at their backs. "You're all going to die! First, if you're lucky, later, if you're not."

Katara's hand on his tightened until his bones ached. He knew she was just as furious as he was, but if she could control her temper, he could do no less without risking shame. Instead, he tightened his own grip and walked down the hill white-knuckled with her.

xxxxx

The very next day, they set their plans into action.

Katara had spent the last week teaching the waterbenders to turn water into steam. They already knew how to turn it to ice by slowing its molecules down, but speeding them up was more difficult, and it was a mark of how good a teacher Katara was that she managed to make them understand the principle of it without being able to demonstrate.

Meanwhile, Aang had gathered as many civilians as he could risk and shipped them out on a Fire Nation boat to a certain island in the southern sea he had learned of from Iroh, who seemed to know a great many things no one else did. On that island grew in great quantities an herb which, when dried and brewed, temporarily blocked the abilities of a bender. When filtered by a waterbender who knew what to look for, it could be made odorless and tasteless. There was a similar herb on the mainland, but it was difficult to find even small amounts of. For Sokka's plan, he would need a great deal.

The Fire Nation had known about it a long time ago, but had apparently deemed such underhanded tactics beneath their notice, preferring to go in hands blazing and feet flying.

Aang's forces were outnumbered. They couldn't afford to cling to pride.

Sokka had spent his time on stealth and reconnaissance, picking off one guard at a time and infiltrating larger camps. He swamped them with false information of Azula's whereabouts, keeping them running about the countryside on wild goose chases to stall for time while the others completed their portions of the plan. Any messengers between camps in an attempt to organize, Sokka's platoon waylaid. They were everywhere at once and yet seemingly nowhere, impossible to find until they checked in to report.

Toph had practised day and night until she became proficient enough at metalbending to make crude weapons, and set about reworking anything not made of soft, decorative metals like gold and copper into serviceable arms.

Zuko himself had somehow become the gopher, cook, and Fire Nation psychology consultant all at once. Before, when he'd first come to join them, he would have found that post insulting and either refused outright or done it sulkily. Now he realized that it was a position of trust, and was thankful for it. Aang trusted him to tell the truth about the way his people thought, so that Aang could understand them better and wage a smarter war. The others trusted him with the details of their most secret plans so that he could carry missives between them without using a stranger as a go-between. They ate the food he made them without question.

Ever since he'd volunteered to stay and die at Katara's side, supported her until the end of her mission, and come back alive with her unconscious in his arms, they had wordlessly accepted his atonement as genuine. Katara herself was instrumental in assuring that this new acceptance of him stuck-- whenever she wasn't training her bender squadron on evaporation, she was with Zuko, either helping him cook or poring over old secret records in the Firelord's personal library.

With his help, she had cleverly adapted several old abandoned firebending weapon designs to work with waterbending instead, the two of them giving Sokka a run for his money in the brains department. The latest of these was a sort of water-bomb, which was simply a regular large shell filled with water and sealed, then rapidly heated with the technique she was teaching her benders so that the increase in pressure would cause it to explode into a cloud of boiling mist.

She accepted his presence whenever he stopped in to assist her, and he accepted hers whenever she came to him. Since Red Day, as the people had started calling Katara's apocalypse, a lot of things had changed for her. Among them was how she related to her friends. Though they loved her unconditionally, Zuko caught the flickers of fear in their eyes sometimes when they looked at her, their inner struggles with accepting what she done over their powerful moral instincts, and knew she saw them too. Conversation was no longer easy and relaxed, but had taken on an air of careful formality that he knew without asking was breaking her heart.

The only one who didn't look at her differently was Zuko, because he'd been there with her. It had been as much his idea as hers, and he understood her reasoning in the face of death that had led her to accept it as the best viable route. He remembered kneeling in front of his father, seeing the flames coming for his face, and knew that there were things about life that were impossible to truly understand until one has faced death.

Katara had come to unwillingly understand that in her situation, there was no truly moral choice to make, only one between two great evils-- allow the war to continue and many people to die in battle, or end the war by killing many people. She had chosen the harder path from her kind and peace-loving heart, and then willingly shouldered the karma walking it brought.

Zuko, more than anyone else, understood. He respected her for it. He _more_ than respected her for it.

The others, however, didn't have the same understanding of the dark side of life that he did, and could not bring themselves to pretend everything was all right.

It wasn't.

He knew she cried sometimes, but she had been very good at finding a hidden place to do it in until today. Perhaps she was simply too tired to move. He came into the library to find her with her face in her hands at the table, surrounded by low haphazard hills of books and scrolls, weeping desolately.

Zuko debated for a moment between letting her have her peace and quiet and going to her side. The fact that she'd chosen a place they both frequented this time indicated to him that maybe she wouldn't mind some comfort this time, so he shrugged and made up his mind.

She didn't look up at his entrance, though he knew she'd heard him.

He put a hand on her shoulder, uncertain what to say but feeling compelled to say something, _anything._ "Katara?" he said nervously.

"Zuko," she mumbled wetly through her hands.

"Should I leave you alone?" he asked awkwardly.

She hesitated, then shook her head. "No, it's okay. Please stay."

He nodded though she couldn't see him and pulled up a chair next to her, then in a fit of daring, reached out and pulled her hands away from her face. They were small and shaking and tear-damp in his own, but she wasn't pulling them back. Her eyes, now that he could see them, were red and swollen. She probably hadn't slept the night before. Again.

"You look awful," he said honestly.

She gave a watery snort. "You sure know how to cheer a girl up."

He shrugged, squeezing her hands. "Sorry. I'm not very good with crying women. Women period, actually."

"I don't blame you, seeing what you grew up with," she cracked.

His heart warmed. She was making an effort to cheer up for his sake. Was there no end to the things about this girl worth caring about?

"I was lucky to live past eight," he admitted. "She's a homicidal maniac. I honestly wonder sometimes if there's any girl in her at all past the bloodthirst."

"I'm sure there is," Katara said, surprising him. "Nobody's ever really evil. She's probably the closest I've ever met, but somewhere in there is a heart that cares about something, and as long as that's there she's still human. I won't forgive her, I won't let her win, but I haven't forgotten that she's human, like me."

"You're doing better than me, then," he confessed. "Most of the time when I think of her I just see this grinning monster, not a person at all."

"We'll win," Katara said after a brief pause. "She's only fighting because she loves to, not to protect anything. We'll win because we have to."

"I believe you," he told her meaningfully. "I do. I believe that Aang will lead us to victory. I believe in the others, and I believe in you."

"Do you believe in yourself?" she asked him, forcing him to meet her gaze.

He shrugged his shoudlers uncomfortably. "I don't know. I'm not even sure I'm helping very much, but... I'd like to."

Katara pulled her hands out of his, startling him, and cradled his face with them, startling him more. "I'll believe in you _for_ you if you can't," she told him simply. "That's what we're here for, that's why the five of us are friends-- to believe in each other, when our belief in ourselves falters."

He stared at her and fought the sudden urge to cry. This was what he come here for. This was why he'd betrayed his country, endured months of distrust, nearly died for. He'd wanted to know what it was like to have real friends. Now, thanks to Katara, he did. "Katara," he mumbled through his suddenly tight throat. "I--"

"I'm glad you're here," she continued, smiling at him as she took him gently apart piece by piece. "I'm glad you decided the way you did, and I'm glad you stayed even though we were hard on you at first. I'm glad you're here, in this library, trying to cheer me up. If it wasn't for you, I would have died on that lake and Aang would still be trying to win his first victory without me behind him. Without you after that day, I-- you're the only one who just let me deal with it in my own way, the only one who didn't try to force me to forgive myself. You kept me from being lonely without pushing me at all. When you were our enemy, there were a lot of things I was sure I couldn't forgive you for. Now that you're my friend, there are even more things I have to thank you for. Just... thank you, Zuko, for being here. For staying with me. It... it means a lot to me."

She was smiling, and crying, and her hands on his face were trembling.

He felt the tears in his own eyes spill over and streak hotly down his cheeks. "You don't have to thank me for anything, Katara," he whispered, not trusting himself to speak louder or move lest he crush her in his arms and never let go. "It's an honour to count myself among your companions, let alone your friend, after all I've done. Thank you. Thank--"

"Shut up, Zuko," she said, and pulled him into her arms. "The correct response to that would have been 'you're welcome.' Dunce."

He smiled helplessly into her shoulder, circling her waist with his arms to pull her tighter. "You're welcome."

She thumped his back reproachfully. "Way too late." And then she was quiet, simply holding him and letting him hold her back.

It was, beyond a doubt, the happiest moment in his life to date. He memorized it for future recollection. There were dark days coming-- he would need every happy moment he could manage to scrape to support him through the approaching storm.

It was a long time before either of them summoned up the strength to let each other go.

xxxxx

The day of battle dawned red-hazed and stifling.

"Red sky at morning, sailor's warning," Sokka muttered superstitiously.

"Well, good thing we're not going to sea, then," Toph retorted waspishly.

Tensions were running high all around, but nowhere more so than in the Avatar's inner circle of confidants. This was their plan. If it failed, a lot of people were going to die, and the Fire Nation would have a chance to recover the ground it had lost. They would be back to square two, or possibly three if they were lucky.

Sokka was nearly babbling, saying whatever idiocy came into his head as soon as it did so just to break the suffocating silence. Toph and Aang could not seem to stop pacing. Katara was the only one who seemed to be calm, but Zuko could tell she was only just holding it together for her friends. They needed to her to encourage them right now, and that meant being strong and confident in their victory. It amazed him that she could present this face to them when instead she was screaming with horror at her own powerlessness.

There had been no time for her to learn to wield a weapon. Without her waterbending, she was nothing but a hindrance on the battlefield, and had no choice but to stay behind and wait for the others to return. It was perhaps the hardest mission any of them had.

"Zuko, you're with me," Aang repeated for the fifth time. "If we can take out Azula, they'll be leaderless again, and during the confusion we'll have a better chance of dividing them and capturing them. The waterbenders should have done their stuff already and be waiting for us there, but if you meet a firebender, don't assume they're powerless. We don't know how fast they figured it out, or if they managed to find an alternate water source. Don't let your guard down. Once Azula's down--"

"Aang, we know," Toph, Sokka, and Zuko said simultaneously, though with distinctly different tones of voice.

"It'll go fine, Aang, relax," said Katara, clapping him on the shoulder before pulling him into a sisterly hug. He tensed for a moment, then relaxed and lay his head on her shoulder. "Just do your job, and trust everyone to do theirs. That's all you can do."

"I know," he said, voice muffled against her, "I just..."

"We know, Aang," Zuko repeated. "Leave it to us."

The Avatar nodded tearily and pulled away from Katara, straightening his back. "Everyone ready?"

"Yes," they said firmly, together.

"Okay, well then, uh... let's go!"

Aang marched out the door, spine stiff with terror. Sokka and Toph followed at his heels, Toph excited to finally be moving, Sokka's face grim and frightening in a way that had little to do with the swirling war-paint. Zuko moved to follow them, but was stopped short as Katara caught his arm.

"Die, and I will _kick your butt,_ " she said ferociously, glaring up at him to mask the fear and insecurity behind it. "I mean it."

He smiled reassuringly at her, and swept her into a hug. "What, and leave you alone with these awkward idiots? No way."

"_Zuko_," she whispered, wordlessly begging him not to joke about this, not to make light of it, please.

"All right," he said, letting his smile fade. "I'll come back, and I'll bring the others with me. Don't worry about us."

"Promise me." There was such quiet desperation in her voice that Zuko nearly wished she had her powers back and was coming to the battle with him. This waiting was too hard for her, who was so used to being at the front of the action, she who had taken him in a one-on-one fight and would have won. She was born to fight, and now she couldn't.

He nodded against her hair. "I promise, Katara."

"Okay." She let him go and stepped back, sniffling. "Go kick some Fire Nation butt for me."

He saluted smartly, grinned, and ran after the others. It would hardly do to be late to the party when he was one of the main guests.

Behind him, he heard Katara slump to the ground.

Within himself, he promised again to himself this time to carry her will to the battlefield with him. He would kick as many Fire Nation butts as he could reach, and he would come back alive with her friends safe and sound in tow. He would keep this promise no matter what it took.

The castle gates boomed shut behind them.

xxxxx

"Surrender," Aang said.

"Deja vu," Azula replied with a smirk, "and here's a double dose-- not a chance, shrimp. I don't know what you did to us, though I'm pretty sure it had something to do with those nasty exploding steam-balls you threw at us two days ago, but even without my bending I'm still strong enough to take you both."

"It wasn't the steam-bombs, those were just a distraction. We put it right into the spring," Aang said, momentarily sidelined by the need to acknowledge the brilliance of his friends and reassured by her statement that she had fallen for the trick and would therefore not be lighting his face on fire from where she stood.

Zuko grabbed Aang's arm and leaned down to whisper urgently in his ear. "She's lying, Aang. There's no way she'd fall for a trick like that, she's not stupid and she never lets her guard down. She can still firebend. I'm sure of it."

"Didn't Mother ever tell you that whispering is rude?" Azula snapped, then sighed. "Ah, well, no help for it. I don't suppose you two plan to just let me go. By the fact that you're both here, when I'm sure you could have used the manpower elsewhere, I gather that you think I'm a _threat._ " She grinned nastily.

Zuko couldn't repress the shudder that ran through him. Katara might still be able to see her as a person, but Zuko was having trouble right now, faced with her demonically amused face. "Aang, let me handle her."

"Zuko, you--" Aang began, but Zuko cut him off, staring hard at his sister.

"This is my fight, Aang. If I lose, feel free to take over, but let me try first. I have a score or two to settle with her."

She laughed delightedly, then fell into a sickening simper. "Aww, widdle Zuzu finks he's all growed up!"

"I'm older than you," he said defensively before he could think to stop himself.

Azula went off into peals of laughter. "You are just _so easy,_ " she gasped. "I don't even have to _try_ to rile you up. Well, come on then, I don't have all day. I have a couple cities to conquer, a few tribes to wipe out, you know. Same old same old. Let's just get this over with."

Zuko forced himself to take a deep breath and push Aang back out of the way before launching himself at her. Flying at her like a berserker would only get him killed quickly. She could think faster than him at the best of times-- he would never win if he were anything but completely stone cold calm.

_Fire Nation butt number one,_ he counted in his head as he crossed the bare steps between them. _This one's for you, Katara._

His sister laughed wildly and let out scythes of flame from each hand, coruscating lethally away from her towards Zuko's midriff. Letting go of conscious, forced thought, he let his body twist him up and away from the scorching white blades, landing on his feet and dropping momentarily to his knees to absorb the shock.

"Impressive," she commented, "widdle Zuzu's learned a new trick or two."

Zuko resisted the impulse to aim for her face, turning the outthrust of his palms downwards at the last second to surprise her with a fast shot at her feet. She danced out of the way barely in time, the bottoms of her leggings smoking. While she was off-balance, he fired off another quick one-two, the first at her knees and the second at her throat. She writhed through the air nearly sideways to avoid them and landed with a new look of consideration rising in her eyes.

"Be careful, Zuko," Aang cried.

He ignored the Avatar. He couldn't afford the distraction, not against her.

Azula began to fight back in earnest, daggers of flame flying from her limbs every time she moved. It had always been her greatest strength, the way she never wasted a movement, and Zuko had seen her fight like this enough to know that she would happily resort to unconventional attacks if he gave her even a fraction of a chance.

He had improved a lot in the last few months, but she was a genius, and he wasn't forgetting that.

His own strength lay in fast, brutal shots at the right moment, not in constant, confusing flurries. He just had to endure her speed and flexibility, evade with the minimum amount of energy expended, until she let her guard down and he got his chance.

"What are you waiting for, Zuzu?" she howled, flying around him until she looked as though she were somehow everywhere at once. "You look like a standing rock from here. Shall I kill you?"

"Go ahead and try," he baited, eyes frantically following her movements and dodging whenever the attacks came too close to simply deflect.

She shrugged and did a backflip over him, her face passing mockingly close to his as she sailed past. He spun to meet her on the descent, punching a fist into her stomach without bothering to firebend it alight. She gasped and crumpled, drawing off to spit blood into the dirt.

"Dirty trick," she wheezed.

"Learned it from you," he retorted with a shrug, not relaxing for even an instant.

Sure enough, before he finished talking she'd launched herself at him again, coming in low under his guard before he could sink to meet her and driving her knee up into his crotch.

The world vanished into soundless white agony for an instant. Zuko made a keening noise and struggled to regain control of himself, but didn't manage it quite fast enough. Azula had slunk out of his reach already and turned to face him, fingers outstretched in a formation he knew well.

"Bye bye, Zuzu," she cooed, and stabbed them at his undefending body.

Zuko did the only thing he could think of and let himself drop bonelessly, hitting the ground with a painful crunch. Azula's fingers nearly passed him, adjusted their course downwards, came towards his chest--

For the second time in his life, Zuko saw death approaching. He had less than half a second to do something, anything, or those fingers would reach him and there would be nothing left of him but a charred, buzzing corpse.

His hand moved on its own, strangely slow as if in a dream, to the dagger in his boot, within reach because of the unwieldy position he'd fallen in. It was futile, it would never make it in time, such a silly gesture really--

Azula touched him.

For the next eternity, Zuko screamed and arched helplessly, his muscles no longer under his control, death creeping through his cells like wildfire. He had known pain like this before, but never at this sustained level. His heart was writhing in his chest, blood charring in his veins, skin peeling off from the inside out. He was dying, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it.

_Sorry, Katara,_ he thought dimly as the world began to fade into sharply expanding black holes. _So sorry._

Zuko gave up and let go, trusting the rest to Aang. He had friends now. They would take care of it. They would make sure--

Azula vomited blood into his face and collapsed atop him.

For a long moment, Zuko could only lie there unmoving, in pain all over and uncomprehending. Then awareness began to return, and with it more pain, but it didn't matter because he was _alive_. There was something hard pressing cruelly into his tender abdomen... the hilt of his dagger, he realized with growing wonder. He'd managed to stab her before she touched him, and the dagger had acted as a conduit for the raging electrical force she'd let loose. One or the other would probably have killed her alone, but both together had put her far beyond anyone's reach.

A moment later her weight was gone and there were gentle, terrible fingers probing his injuries. "Are you okay?" Aang asked foolishly.

Zuko would have laughed, but his lungs wouldn't seem to work properly. "No," he rasped with utmost difficulty.

Aang stared helplessly down at him. He had no ability at healing. He was born to make wounds, not close them.

"Home," Zuko forced out. "Katara."

"She can't heal anymore, she can't waterbend, remember?"

"Home," Zuko insisted. "Water. Katara."

"I have water," Aang said, glad to be able to do something. He screwed the cap off his waterbag and held it to Zuko's lips.

It was pointless to explain that it would take more than a few mouthfuls to rehydrate him when half his body's water had been boiled off through his skin. He didn't have the energy anyway. Breathing hurt like being kicked repeatedly in the chest. His skin was a wasteland of oozing, cracked flesh. His innards felt tenderized, perhaps partially cooked. He'd never experienced this wide an array of agonies all at once, and prayed devoutly that he never would again.

Even so, he thought he might just survive. It would be difficult making it back to the capital in this state, but he could probably hold it together that long. He had a promise to fulfill.

Then, after it was met, he could die in peace and leave the pain behind at last.

"Home," he repeated exhaustedly. "Home."

"All right, all right!" Aang said. "I don't think I should move you, but if you're sure--"

"Move him and I'll tan your hide," snapped a voice from behind Aang.

Zuko couldn't move his half-liquefied eyes down to see who it was, but he didn't need to. He knew that voice. "Katara," he croaked.

"You _idiot,_ " she snarled furiously. He had rarely heard her this angry... perhaps never. "What the hell were you thinking? You look like someone cut you up for an autumn barbeque. I ought to--"

"Do anything to him right now and he'll actually die," Aang interrupted hastily.

"I know!" she yelled, her voice cracking hysterically on the last sound.

Aang backed off, cowed.

Katara knelt next to him, gave him a much more practiced workover than the one Aang had inexpertly attempting minutes ago. "You're a mess," she growled.

Zuko could hear the frustration boiling in her voice and ached for her, knowing that she wanted to heal him more than anything in this moment and simply couldn't.

"Aang," she said suddenly, and the change in her voice was so abrupt that Zuko nearly tried to sit up and see what had happened. "Get over here and lend me your hands."

"What?" the Avatar asked, mystified and still half-panicked.

She gave a wordless snarl of frustration and reached out to yank Aang down next to her. "Lend me your hands. I can't control the water myself, or at least not nearly enough to be of any good to him, but _you_ can, and maybe I can--" She trailed off into silence.

He could nearly hear her concentrating, could see in his mind her furrowed brow and intense expression. Either this would work or he would have to make it back to the capital and the healers there in this horrendous condition. There was nothing he could do either way except trust to Katara and her gift for making things listen to her.

At first, there was nothing. Zuko sighed and resigned himself to the route of unspeakable pain.

But then, after a few minutes, he began to feel something, a warm tingling in his chest like someone was pouring tea down his veins. Everywhere the warmth touched, the pain lessened. He wanted to cry with relief. The warmth progressed down his torso until it reached his navel, then went out like a light. Katara broke into shuddering gasps.

"That's all I can do," she said. "It had better be enough to get him back to the capital or I'll... I'll..." Her voice swam and broke.

"It'll be enough," Aang assured her. "I'll help you."

Zuko heard a rustle and realized she'd shaken her head.

"No, you won't," she said firmly. "Your army is still out there fighting. They need their leader. Go tell everyone that Azula is dead and the battle will end faster. Go on."

He nodded. "You're right." A moment later, there was a familiar whistling rush and Aang's presence vanished.

There was silence then. He lay in it, wondering what was happening, why she was just sitting there without saying anything.

"You idiot," Katara whispered at last, touching the unscarred side of his face with shaking fingers. "If I hadn't followed you..."

"Why?" Zuko forced himself to say, though his throat was even drier now if possible. _Why did you come? It's not safe._

The hand drifted from his face to curl into a fist against his chest and thump once, reproachfully. "I don't allow the people I love to die," she said. "It's against my house rules."

Splashes of warmth hit his face, one then two. He wished he could lift his arm and wipe those unwelcome tears away, but that was farther away than a half-forgotten dream. He settled for mentally letting out a yell of joy at the implied thought in her words, and resolved never to let go next time he got to opportunity to hold her. "Thanks."

"Stupid harebrained jerk," she muttered. "Can you stand?"

"No."

"If I help you?"

He considered, then said "Yes." He wasn't sure about this, but it was worth a try.

She had regained some of her strength since Red Day, but not all of it, so it was a long ten minutes of cursing and struggling before they were upright together, and then it was a precarious and extremely painful affair.

"One step at a time," she panted. "We'll get there when we get there. Just take this first step."

Zuko did, somehow. Then he took another, and another, and they made their way home that way until a triage squad found them and whisked them back the rest of the way in a wounded-cart.

He lay with his head on Katara's lap, her fingers stroking his brow soothingly as he gasped in pain every time the wagon hit a bump. He had never hurt so badly in his life, but he had also never been happier. Strangely, the two were not irreconciliable.

Upon arrival in the capital, Katara situated him in a bed near the window in the infirmary and sat herself resolutely beside him in a chair. "You waited for me," she murmured to him as he thankfully began to drift off to sleep, stuffed full of painkilling herbs. "Now it's my turn. Sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

xxxxx

She was.

What's more, she was there when he woke up every morning for the next several weeks as he recuperated under her trainees' capable hands.

During his brief patches of lucidity through the fever, Katara told him news about the war.

_The earthbenders have taken a large portion of the army capture. Toph has them bound in iron now, and the civilians are taking care of them. _

_Aang defeated the three remaining generals. The army is scattering into smaller divisions under what leaders are left._

_Sokka managed to gather the remaining into one big area, and Aang convinced them to surrender. _

_We've won, Zuko. The war is over. We won._

About a week into his recuperation, Aang, Sokka and Toph burst into the room together, fairly glowing with joy. "They've surrendered," Aang cried. "We're not sure what we're going to do with them yet, but they seem happy with the terms we offered them."

'"What terms?" asked Zuko, his voice still rough but much improved.

"We're going to tear down the defense walls of the capital and dismantle the harbour defenses," Sokka answered, "and we'll be keeping a few volunteers hostage for the first little while so they don't get any ideas about revolt, but we're not assuming control over the nation. They'll be free to govern themselves as they wish, but we're taking all their weapons and they won't be allowed to have more than a token military force for the next five years. If they prove themselves capable of peace, we'll start trusting them with gradual rearmament then. Also, we've instated you as Firelord. Just so you know."

"_What?_" Zuko wheezed, jerking halfway upright in his bed before Katara caught him and pushed him back down with a disapproving glare. "But I'm banished! I fought on your side! I helped kill the Firelord, and killed Azula outright! I'm a traitor! There's no _way_ they'll follow me. I'll be assassinated before the week is out. You're crazy."

They grinned at each other, then back at Zuko. "Actually," said Sokka, "they're not as mad as you think. Aang talked to them for a long time, explaining the truth about how your father and Azula were bloodthirsty, ambitious psychos. The army's still a bit restless, they're not the type of people to take defeat well, but I think if you talk to them too they might eventually come around. Of course, we're not stupid enough to think it'll happen instantly, so you'll be guarded at all times and there'll be a sizable contingent of allied forces stationed here in the capital with you... both to keep you safe, and to protect the disarmed Fire Nation citizens from any angry retribution from outside sources. They surrendered. Their safety is also part of the terms."

"Outside sources?" echoed Zuko. "The Earth Kingdom?"

Sokka nodded. "Yes. With their oppressors defenseless, they'll doubtless get some ideas about getting revenge sooner or later. We're not going to let anyone else die for this war."

"Good," said Zuko, risking a smile and wincing as his face screamed in protest. "But I'm still not sure about the whole Firelord thing. They _hate_ me."

"Now they do," Sokka conceded, "at least some of them do. But if you work hard and lead well, they'll eventually get it. Until then, we'll keep you safe and in power, so don't worry."

"Oh, I'm not worried," Zuko half-joked, "I'm _terrified._"

"It'll be fine, Zuko," murmured Katara. "We're behind you, and we're being careful. At least try. If it really isn't going to work, we'll think of something else, but right now this is the best idea we have. Try it for us. ...For me."

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it," he said crossly. "Of course I'll do it. I just thought I'd let you know. For the record."

"Good on you, Sparky," Toph approved.

"Sparky?" the rest of them echoed.

"Well, y'know," she backpedaled, waving her hands defensively. "He shocked everything he touched there for a while... I just thought... oh, forget it. You people have no sense of humour."

They laughed, together, the five of them alive and relatively well on the other side of victory.

Zuko reached out and caught Katara's hand, unnoticed behind her leg and the chair.

"Glad to have you back, Sparky," Sokka said genially. "You did a good job taking out Azula. It made everything a lot easier for us."

"Don't call me--"

"Yes, thank you," interrupted Aang seriously. "We probably couldn't have done it without you."

"Am I forgiven?" Zuko cracked, laughing as he said it but meaning every word more than they probably realized.

Katara half-crushed his hand, making him yelp. "Can't you hear them?" she said. "Of course you are, you idiot."

Zuko felt at a loss. He had everything he'd ever wanted, now-- peace, friends, forgiveness. "Thanks," he said thickly.

"Are you going to cry again?" Katara asked fondly, pretending irritation.

"No!" he said, galvanized. "What am I, six?"

"Again?" Sokka echoed, too smart for his own good.

"Never mind," Zuko said quickly before Katara could open her mouth. He didn't think she would have said anything, but he didn't want her lying to them on his behalf, even about something silly like this.

"Oh, really," said Sokka, a sheen of satisfaction threading through his voice. "Well, whatever. I'll pry that story out of Katara some time or later. Right now, we need to restore the throne room to some kind of order. It's a bit..."

"Destroyed," Toph supplied smugly. "Good one, Katara."

"What she said," continued Sokka without a hitch. "You'll be needing it after you're inaugurated. Come on Toph, Aang. I need your mad earthbending skills."

Grumbling good-naturedly, the trio left together, leaving Katara and Zuko alone again in the sunlit infirmary room.

"Firelord, huh," he mused thoughtfully.

"I think you'll make a good one," Katara said supportively, forsaking the chair with a sigh of relief in favour of stretching out beside him on the bed.

He obligingly shifted over to give her room, letting her rest her head on his upper arm and curling his forearm around her shoulders. "You think so?"

She nodded. "Yes. Ozai and Azula held you under their heels right from the start, but I think you'll find now that they're gone that you're stronger than you think. You told me the story of your scar, right? That care you hold for your people, enough to make you stand up to your father in a war council even though you were afraid of him, is exactly what will win them over. You love your people, Zuko, and want the best for them. They'll come to learn that the longer you rule."

"I can't help but feel afraid that someone more... charismatic will come along and lead them to war again," he confessed. "I mean, I've spent my entire life cringing in the shadows and trying to assert my strength in all the wrong ways. What's to say I won't screw this up like I did everything else?"

"You didn't screw _everything_ up," Katara reminded him sternly. "You came to us, remember? You did that right. And you won't screw up, because you'll have us behind you, helping you. I'll be there to kick your butt if you do anything stupid."

"You will?" he asked softly.

"Of course," she answered without a moment's hesitation. "I thought I'd already made that pretty clear."

Zuko closed his eyes and savoured her words. "I just wanted to hear you say it out loud," he said. "Thanks, Katara. For staying."

"We're even now," she joked, but then turned to support herself on one elbow and look down at him. "Seriously. I'm not going anywhere. Better get used to it."

He grinned at her, feeling something in his chest let go and his breath begin to come easier. "With pleasure." Though it hurt ferociously, he gritted his teeth and hauled himself up to a sitting position, legs crossed before him and Katara's face within easy reach. "I would ask permission for this, but that would be wimpy," he told her seriously.

"Don't worry," she said, smiling too. "You're an invalid. If you did anything I didn't like I could take you out no problem."

Zuko recognized a good opportunity to shut up and leaned forward to meet her waiting lips, winding his fingers absently through her loose waterfall of hair in order to pull her closer.

Her hands came up to curl around his neck, tingling wherever her fingers touched. Soon she would be able to waterbend again. By then he planned to be up and able to firebend again, too. Being at the mercy of a sadistic waterbender was not his idea of a good time. Sparring with one, on the other hand, definitely was.

Katara shifted and stepped it up a bit, and Zuko smiled helplessly into her. He had no idea what he'd done to deserve a tenth of this, but he sure wasn't complaining.

xxxxx

The robes itched. Somehow, his father had neglected to mention that.

"I know you're probably very angry right now," Zuko addressed the gathered remnant of the Fire Nation nobility.

They stared impassively back at him, arms crossed and faces cold.

He gulped and continued, doing his best to pretend that he wasn't terrified half out of his wits. "I don't know whether or not you wanted to continue the war or not. Frankly, I don't care." Belligerence. It had always worked well enough for Azula.

The gathered nobles sat up a little and began to murmur amongst themselves. He hoped that was a good sign.

"It's over now. The Avatar has ended it. Whether you like it or not, you have to figure out how to live with peace now. I think, if you give it a chance, you'll find that you like it better than constantly having to be on your guard."

The murmurs of doubt intensified.

Zuko fought down the panic rising in his chest and clenched his fists. Katara was somewhere behind him, sitting with Aang and the others at the top of the hall. His friends believed he could do this. Trusting them was the least he could do.

"Listen to me," he snapped, letting their confidence buoy him.

The murmurs stopped.

He didn't give himself time to register surprise before continuing. "You think I'm a traitor, yes?"

"Of course. You fought with the Avatar against us," a lord answered haughtily for all of them. "You're a filthy traitor and though I am forced to follow you by armed might, know that I would not be doing so willingly."

Zuko met his eyes and refused to back down, calling on all the strength he'd built up on his journeys until now. "You're wrong," he said. "A traitor is someone who betrays his people. I didn't. I joined the Avatar to save you from the war that was sucking your humanity away. I've read the records. We used to be a great people. We were strong, yes, and ambitious, always, but we were also kind once, and wise. We've forgotten that. We've become monsters, waging war for the sake of conquest alone, careless of all the blood we shed on the way. We needed to be stopped."

"You know nothing," spat a noble. "The strong deserve to rule, the weak to be ruled. We deserve to rule them. They were fools for standing in our way."

"They won," Zuko reminded him fiercely. "Those people you call 'weak' with that disdainful look on your face. Yes, I fought with them, but I'm hardly strong enough to have turned the tide on my own. They would have won anyway, and that makes them stronger than you."

The hall burst into a wave of furious talking all at once, but Zuko had hit his stride now.

"Shut up!" he bellowed, glaring at them. "We lost. Get over it. We're not here to talk about the war. We're here to talk about peace, so get over yourselves and pull it together. Surely you're not so insecure that you can't live without a war to give you purpose." He glared around at them, meeting each of their eyes in turn. "Well? Are you strong enough to hold yourselves to peace, or are you nothing without your lust for conquest?"

"You call us weak?" another noble asked, dangerously quiet.

"You tell me," Zuko challenged. "Can you do it?"

They stared mutinously back at him.

"War is a habit for you. If you go back to it the first chance you get, then yes. You're weak. You're pathetic. The real test of strength is in whether you can make peace work for you. It's going to be hard work, and take a long time, but if I didn't think you were up to it I wouldn't be up here. I'd be letting the Avatar beat you into submission. Instead, I'm giving you a chance to prove yourselves to me as the strong and glorious people I know you are. I'll ask you again: _can you do it?_ "

"Shut up, you puling brat, of course we can," snapped the second noble resentfully. "You think us so pathetic we cannot stand a single day's hard work? You think we cannot--" He stopped, but it was too late.

Zuko smiled. "Good," he said. "I thought so. The first step will be negotiations with the Earth Kingdom for reparations. We've done a lot of damage to Ba Sing Se and the surrounding areas. The least we can do is help fix it."

The nobles grumbled, but they'd been defeated and they knew it.

"How do you plan to get us in the same room as each other for negotiations? There's no neutral ground, and neither of us will stand to be at each other's mercy--"

Zuko sat back and sighed with relief. His friends had been right. He _could_ do this.

Behind him, he could feel if not see Katara smiling at him. She would be there too, holding him up whenever he succumbed to the weariness of the long road. He wondered if she would consent to becoming Fire Lady... probably not, but it would be worth it to see the look on her face when he asked her. The others too would be there, for advice and support if he needed it, for a reality check if he needed _that_. Iroh was also on his way back to the palace and his mere presence would be an enormous comfort to Zuko.

He would not be alone in this.

His people would stand again as the bright beacon of culture they had once been. The other people they shared the world with would learn to see the Fire Nation as something other than a symbol of fear.

As their Firelord, he would see it done.

**XxxxxxxX**

**A/N: **So dead. I wrote this entire thing at work today, in one six hour stretch of doom. I surely hope I've seen the last of this plot bunny, otherwise I may have to cry.

I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you very much for reading this, I appreciate your time.

Comments and questions, as always, are welcome. :)

-Eia


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